Editorial
Modes  of signification in cultural discourse

Signification is studied in relation with (models of) representation, with the “[…] human subject who uses it and is defined by means of it” and “cannot be isolated from the cultural system which generates it” (Silverman, 1984:3). Based on the concept of relation/relatedness and relationship, signification works at the level of signifiers (particularly the paradigmatic axis) and of discourse (the syntagmatic axis), allowing a kaleidoscopic articulation of verbal or non-verbal elements which make up a new pattern of representations. The human subject and the symbolic order constitute the pivot of the „new pattern”, which captures and renders the slightest tremors of the changes registered from a cultural point of view. The representation of reality is organized by the mind with the purpose of achieving new knowledge, of understanding that reality from another perspective. The signification or resignification of reality shows the „action of signs” as unfolding something less visible, different from commonness. 
The model of representation offered by Ch. S. Peirce foregrounds the fact that signs are classified into three relational modes (the symbolic, the iconic and the indexical) with reference to “the purpose of their users within particular contexts”. This means that a sign not only refers through similarity to its object (icon), or through causal/factual connection to its object (index), or through interpretive acts or norm of reference to its object (symbol), but it is also related and dependant on the way it is used, on the spatio-temporal frame of the process of meaning-making-and-interpreting it, by whom it is used and for what purpose. 
A mode of signification in cultural discourse is an intentional “window” onto a represented reality, a specific way of producing encoded messages requiring the knowledge of cultural codes for decoding them. Being a specific way of encapsulating = representing reality, a mode of signification communicates that reality through discursive strategies which allow the process of constructing a well-articulated discourse and the possibility of interpreting it following recognizable codes; that is, ideas, communicated through language or other media, are organized in discourses whose function is that of persuading, manipulating, convincing, leading the interpreter of the message to one of the directions intended by the encoder; on the other hand, a mode of signification offers, through its novel discourse, a new perspective on the world the human subject belongs to. The mode of signification supports both the realization of discourse through/via which cultural values and practices are foregrounded and of different types of interaction. 
Modes of signification may be classified according to: tools used to „construct reality”; language (spoken/written), image (motion/still), senses (sound, taste, smell etc.), mixed (advertisements); form (abstract and concrete); medium: mass media; arts; academic writing etc.; genre: narrative, dramatic, poetic etc.; temporal dimensions (classical, modernist, postmodernist etc.); spatial dimensions (specific to different arts such as architecture, choreography, painting); cultural practices; “master tropes” (Chandler 2002:123-146): metaphorical, metonymic, ironic, allegorical; codes (speaking; writing; reading; translating etc.); organization of relations between encoder and decoder of significations; the modality used by the encoder in order to make a message reliable; the intertextual dimension conceived by the encoder. 
The complexity of modes of signification is the index of the encoder’s creativity and of the decoder’s ability to understand the message and judge it from different perspectives. The papers in this issue of the journal are illustrative of the diversity of modes of signification in cultural discourse. 

Bibliography 
Avădanei, Ştefan (2002): Introduction to Poetics, II, Institutul European, Iaşi. 
Chandler, Daniel (2002): Semiotics: The Basics, Routledge, London, New York. 
Cmeciu, D.(1999): Virginia Woolf, or the Quest for the Poetic Word, ProHumanitate, Bucureşti. 
Eco, U. (1979): A Theory of Semiotics, Indiana University Press, Bloomington. 
Hartley, John and Montgomery, Martin (1985): “Representations and Relations: Ideology and Power in Press and TV News” in Discourse and Communication:New Approaches to the Analysis of Mass Media (ed.by T.A.van Dijk), de Gruyter & CO, Berlin, New York, pp.233-269. 
Lodge, D. (1977/1989): The Modes of Writing. Metaphor, Metonymy and the Typology of Modern Literature, Edward Arnold (a division of Hodder and Stoughton Limited), London, Melbourne, Auckland. 
Peirce, C.S. (electronic edition): The Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce (by John Deely), reproducing Vols. I-VI ed. Charles Hartshorne and Paul Weiss (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1931-1935), Vols. VII-VIII ed. Arthur W. Burks (same publisher, 1958). Silverman, Kaja (1984): The Subject of Semiotics, Oxford University Press, New York.
 Doina Cmeciu
 Ştefan Avădanei